Now that Lieberman has been defeated in the primary, it's time to go for the big question about what exactly has gone wrong over the past six years. I'm confronted in the media over and over with the London bombing plot and how that supposedly helps Lieberman and conservative candidates, and I can't help but give a nod to Bush's most brilliant lie, uttered after 9/11 that we are in a war on terror. This framework was not really challenged at the time, though the press didn't accept it readily as obvious. But it is this framework and our conception of fear and the appropriate response to it that drives America's recent and rapid decline in power and prestige.
George Soros's book The Age of Fallibility (reviewed at FDL) was really the first time a major figure took on the framework of the war on terror, and called it a false metaphor. I think he's right, because in truth, there is no more a war on terror than there is a war on purple. Stopping terrorism is not a war, just like stopping mobsters is not the same thing as declaring war. Iraq is a war, Afghanistan is war, but terrorism is more like a disease than a military opponent. Soros is a mostly lonely voice asking America to wake up and understand its mistaken framework, and correct it. At this point, our mistakes are as obvious as the reluctance of our political system to admit them. The war on terror is a psychological comfort blanket now, something we hang on to so we needn't wrestle with larger questions about our own morality.
Soros reiterated a number of his claims in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today.
An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home. It has led to a dangerous extension of executive powers; it has tarnished our adherence to universal human rights; it has inhibited the critical process that is at the heart of an open society; and it has cost a lot of money. Most importantly, it has diverted attention from other urgent tasks that require American leadership, such as finishing the job we so correctly began in Afghanistan, addressing the looming global energy crisis, and dealing with nuclear proliferation.With American influence at low ebb, the world is in danger of sliding into a vicious circle of escalating violence. We can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor. If we persevere on the wrong course, the situation will continue to deteriorate. It is not our will that is being tested, but our understanding of reality. It is painful to admit that our current predicaments are brought about by our own misconceptions. However, not admitting it is bound to prove even more painful in the long run. The strength of an open society lies in its ability to recognize and correct its mistakes. This is the test that confronts us.
The reality of America is that we cannot be destroyed by outside forces, we can only destroy ourselves. And the fear that George Bush, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney, and the rest of these right-wing extremist pseudo-conservatives whip up has led to a host of demeaning barriers to freedom. Rather than focusing on our moral authority, we allow torture and in parts of the talk radio dial, celebrate it. Rather than acting as free citizens, we now must show IDs in office buildings across America, strip before boarding buses and airplanes, and submit to intimidation of scientists and academics pursuing intellectual inquiry. Rather than holding our corporate, priestly, or political leaders accountable for lies, theft, and gross immorality, we must submit to endless media sheep bleating about hyperpatriotism and free markets that are nothing but con jobs.
That is not freedom, and that is not a war on terror. That is America destroying itself and gorging on debt to hide our painful hypocritical distortion of reality. It's time to understand that there is no war on terror going on here, there is only a war on accountability and a war on America perpetrated by the Republican Party, its leadership, and its enablers in the press and political world. It's time to stand up and say no more, that we will not accept this.
Now, to be clear for the idiot right-wingers reading this, terrorism is one of many problems that we must solve, and it's a serious problem, though probably a lot less serious than global warming. The reality of America though is that we are too strong as a country for any force to destroy except our own moral failings. I believe the American people know this, and are willing to begin the long multi-year conversation about how to contain the immense damage George Bush and the right-wing has caused. While the American people are ready to begin to admit our mistakes and make ourselves great again, our political, corporate, priestly, and media leaders are not. It is time to wake them up and force them to begin to acknowledge their role in the last six years. It's time.
The war on terror just doesn't exist any more than a child's imaginary friend exists. It's only there as comfort and succor for spoiled political leaders. We're stronger than that.
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